Now days even non gardeners can put a welcoming basket by a front door or gate or patio with no fuss. All it takes is one basket (this one is actually vinyl but resembles willow) and a couple of Fiesta pots or color bowls of mixed flowers (petunia, mini belles and verbena). You can get them at most any place that sells seasonal plants...even the grocery store. They are already done by color scheme for you so all you have to do is set them in a basket. If your state still sells small ivy, you might add that in for a nice trailing effect. Of course, you DO have to remember to water them and perhaps move them to a shady location in the heat of summer...
WARNING: SMALL RANT HERE...I think it is too bad when those who are non-gardeners ignore the seasons. They think the outdoors is what they walk through to get from their house to their car or from their car to their work. I've never been able to understand how some can be so clueless and removed from their surroundings. The only thing that tells them when the season has changed is that they might have to wear a jacket or change to shorts. Oye! I have a stepson like that...I swear a bomb could go off in his yard and he wouldn't notice for days, weeks or months if ever.
In April of 2013 I adopted a new baby...a beautiful lace leaf Japanese maple...perfect for filling the corner of our newly constructed privacy screen/wind break on the back patio. It was love at first sight for this plant besotted gardener. It was in a suspiciously small pot for its size but I was sure I could convince the roots to spread out and be happy in this large redwood tub. All seemed well as it started to leaf out this spring. My gardener's ego was pleased that I had indeed "rescued" this tree from unhappiness in a small pot and the purchase price of $75 (a lot for me!) was vindicated. (I had ignored the warning signs, it seemed, during the previous summer as it seemed to get a lot of tip die back, even with copious amounts of water).
It never fully leafed...it just stopped and the little leaflets never opened.
What had I done? I forked the tub in a panic and discovered that the root ball was a solid mass. I couldn't get my big garden fork into it. I still didn't give up and added fertilizer, drenched it with my special compost tea and talked to it. But by May nothing had changed. I wrenched it out of the tub. It was time for a post mortem. Turns out the main root system had continued to wrap itself around the root ball. Some research (an article in Fine Gardening) confirmed that I had made a classic mistake thinking I could change the rooting habit of a tree. According to the article, I never should have fallen for it. I should have popped off the pot right there in the nursery, seen the wadded up root ball and passed. You can't change the mind of a tree root system!
So a new baby is growing in the big tub. It was in a 2 gallon tub...freshly dug and brought from the tree farm south of Eugene, OR to the new nursery of choice for me. I forked over $47.99 this time. It got the "treatment" of compost tea and fertilizer along with recharged potting soil. So lesson learned...you never stop learning in the gardening game, it seems!
This concrete swan is a real treasure for a succulent gardener! I just about had the big one when I spotted this planter at TJ Maxx! I had to have it...even if I thought that I couldn't lift it into the cart without help! But I just sucked it up and heaved it in. I peeled the sticker off and gave it to the clerk at the checkout as I figured I had only one more lift in me...from the cart to the trunk of the car. Oh where is my undergardener when I need him?
I filled the beauty up with graptoveria, echeveria and sedums.
Other animals in my succulent menagerie include this owl...another TJ Maxx find that I filled with a trailing crassula and some hens & chicks.
We're promised a week of good temps (lows in the high 40's and highs in the 70's so I'm setting out my tender succulents this week. The pink center is a Fred Ives graptoveria. The blue are echeveria and the lime green are sedum in front and a miniature ice plant towards the back.
My collection of garden stakes has dwindled over the last 40 years...but the ones that are left (mainly redwood) are looking bad after umpteen seasons in the ground holding up beans and tomatoes. So after a good sanding to take off the fungi, a coat of Storm stain in "wet sand" color seemed a good idea. There was a time early on in my gardening life when redwood stakes were the "garden variety" stake of choice, available at any garden center in California for about $3 for a seven footer. Flash forward 40 years, and those stakes (if you can find them) are upwards of $15 per! I guess this is because redwood became the darling of the tree hugging generation and all our redwood supply has dried up. In Oregon, cedar is the wood of choice. Oregonians claim that Port Orford cedar is better than redwood...more resistant to rot and a lot stronger. Hopefully this coat of stain will keep both the redwood survivors and the cedar newbies going for the rest of my gardening life.
Meet paeonia x 'Jan van Leeuwen' This was my gift to myself this year in anticipation of Mother's Day (thinking it might bloom by then) I planted it in April and it is blooming for Memorial Day. Peonies like it here in this climate with just enough winter to let it "rest" between growing and blooming seasons. And like many plants fond of the Pacific Northwest, they like an acid soil.
This is a Monrovia plant, of course. My motto is "Look for the Monrovia label." If you're gonna splurge on a plant, get one grown by Monrovia and you'll have a better than average chance of success and satisfaction! Monrovia has locations in the Pacific Northwest as well as California. Their plants are well potted in good soil and not root bound like the stuff you find at the big box chains. These blooms are about 5" across and open wide in the sun.
